Bitter Wash Road Page 30

  ~ * ~

  33

  LATE AFTERNOON NOW, Hirsch sprawled on his sofa in a T-shirt and baggy jeans, bare heels propped on the coffee table, laptop on his thighs. He was writing up an outline of his theory for DeLisle and Croome. E-mail it, give them time to absorb it, then follow with a phone call.

  After that—out of his hands.

  The town was quiet, the highway, the school on the other side. Hirsch typed steadily, but before he reached the good bit, Spurling and the Chrysler, the desk phone rang.

  Leonard Latimer, heat in his voice: ‘I’m scared Ray’s going to do something stupid.’

  ‘Mr Latimer.’ Hirsch blinked, recovered. ‘Stupid how? Where are the boys?’

  ‘Not here, thank God. Just come, will you?’

  And he cut the connection. Hirsch gaped at the handset: catching flies, his mother called it.

  ~ * ~

  He was shuddering his way over the Bitter Wash corrugations before he remembered the Beretta.

  Idiot. But after travelling all day he’d been glad to shove his uniform in the laundry basket, dump the Beretta and his belt and service pistol and cuffs and baton and all that shit into his top drawer. He wasn’t going to drag it all on again, not for the Latimers, so he’d just grabbed his service pistol. Even in his T-shirt, jeans and battered Asics he was a cop.

  Would he need to draw his gun? Maybe Raymond would do everyone a favour and shoot his old man and then himself.

  Leonard didn’t say if guns were involved, though, did he? Arrogant old shit. Arrogant old shit who doesn’t know that I know he’s about to be at the centre of a major bust.

  ~ * ~

  Glancing at Wendy Street’s house before he breached the Latimers’ stately gateposts, Hirsch spotted the old Volvo. No one in the garden or driveway or on the veranda. The old feeling crept through him: unfinished business.

  He drove deeper onto the property. House and grounds had looked timeworn enough when he was last here, looking into Craig Latimer’s pyromania; now the neglect was more apparent. The lawn, overgrown then, was dying. Wind debris—palm fronds, twigs, branches, plastic bags, seedling containers, a director’s chair— hadn’t been cleared. He steered around a bicycle dumped in the gravel. When he walked the crazy path to the veranda, he stepped over weeds, a cricket bat, dead snails. Meanwhile the gutters above him grew grass clumps and paint flakes peeled from the veranda posts. A stalactite of bird shit had set hard against one wall, dropped from a swallow’s nest high on a light fitting. God knew the miseries the place contained.

  Hirsch rapped his knuckles on the door.

  ~ * ~

  When Leonard Latimer answered he didn’t look particularly panicked. He glanced over Hirsch’s shoulder at the HiLux and said warmly, ‘Come in.’

  Hirsch hesitated only briefly before stepping into the hallway— which was the signal for Raymond Latimer to appear on his flank, emerging from the front room with a shotgun. The man looked completely unhinged. Hirsch turned to duck outside, an instinctive urge to find cover with his service pistol.

  ‘No you don’t.’ Spurling, blocking his way with an arid smile and a .303 rifle.

  He came hard at Hirsch, spinning him around, pinning him to the wall. Disarmed him neatly and patted him down. Ankles included. The Beretta wouldn’t have done him much good after all.

  ‘Supe?’ Hirsch said, trying not to sound bewildered, frightened.

  ‘Shut up.’

  Hirsch glanced at Leonard, the only one not armed. ‘What, you’re the brains of the outfit?’

  The patriarch gave him the look he kept for tradesmen. ‘Be quiet.’

  They stood there crowding him. All Hirsch had on his side now was time. ‘Where’s the Chrysler, Supe?’

  ‘Ah, the Chrysler,’ Spurling said. ‘Received an interesting call about that from a CIB sergeant at Broken Hill earlier today.’ His narrow face grew tighter. ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Apart from the various people who spotted it when Melia Donovan died and again when Alison Latimer died?’ Hirsch shrugged. ‘Internal Investigations.’

  Spurling chewed on that. ‘No, I don’t believe you. Changes nothing, anyway.’

  ‘Hang on, Matthew,’ Leonard said tetchily. ‘What’s this about your car?’

  ‘It’s not a problem, Len,’ Spurling said. ‘I’ll disappear the car. And the witnesses...’ He smiled. ‘Well, everyone knows how reliable witness statements are. Come on.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ Latimer wasn’t finished. ‘What possessed you to drive something so distinctive?’

  ‘You think I was going to roll up in a police cruiser?’

  ‘I’m with you, Len,’ Hirsch said stoutly. ‘Not real smart, is it? I’d—’

  ~ * ~

  Hirsch came round on the parched lawn at the side of the house.

  He didn’t think he’d been out long, the sun hadn’t moved. But Christ, his head. Must have been Ray, with the butt of the shotgun, then they’d dragged him outside.

  ‘Get up.’

  Hirsch made a show of it, gauging the three men from where he lay: Spurling with the .303, Ray Latimer with the shotgun... and Leonard with a folded tarpaulin that Hirsch didn’t like one bit. Spurling booted him. ‘Get a move on.’

  On his feet now, rocky, Hirsch said, ‘Where are we going?’

  He was guessing somewhere his blood and guts could be safely spilled on the tarp. Somewhere away from the house and sheds.

  ‘Shut up,’ Spurling said, driving the rifle butt into his spine.

  Hirsch fell to his knees. As soon as he was upright, Spurling prodded him across the yard and out past the sheds. Hirsch scanned left and right; spotted the black Chrysler tucked behind a haystack.

  When they reached the track leading down to the Tin Hut, Hirsch shook his head. ‘Now there’s a novel idea, stage another suicide at the site of the first one.’

  ‘Keep moving,’ Spurling said, punching again with the butt of the .303. The pain seemed to stab through Hirsch, shoot up his body and lodge behind his left eye. He stumbled.

  ‘Quit stalling.’ Spurling began to stride on ahead, calling back. ‘Keep him moving.’

  Downslope to the creek, which had retreated to a stretch of foetid mud between muddy pools, the edges dense with dying reeds. Sheep had tried to reach the water, churning the mud. A dead one floated in the largest pool; a live one struggled feebly in the reeds. The Latimers paid no attention.

  ‘You clowns aren’t farmers,’ Hirsch said.

  ‘What?’ said Raymond Latimer. He swung the shotgun butt into Hirsch’s stomach. ‘What would you know?’

  Hirsch doubled over, gasping, hands on his knees. ‘You’ve run the place into the ground. Big shots in the district? You can’t even pay your grocery bills, you’re a laughing stock.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Ray Latimer said.

  ‘Will you pricks get a move on?’ yelled Spurling, who had reached the flat area beside the hut’s crooked chimney.

  Leonard nudged his son. ‘You heard what the man said, keep him moving.’

  Ray edged away from his father, sulky. He prodded Hirsch. ‘Move it.’

  Hirsch stumbled again, falling to his knees. Hold things up, goad these losers, drive a wedge between them. It was all he had.

  ‘You’re pathetic, Ray,’ he said, climbing to his feet, ‘the way you’ve always let your old man call the shots. Just a sad little paedophile, that’s how they’ll remember you.’

  That was stretching it, but it got a reaction. ‘What? Fuck you,’ Ray screamed, felling Hirsch again.

  Spurling, at the far end of the hut now, said, ‘Do we have to do this? Just bring him over here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Hirsch, looking up at Latimer, ‘get on with it, Raymond. Pay attention to your orders, it’s what you’re good at.’

  ‘I don’t take orders from anyone.’

  Spurling was wound tight as a spring. ‘Can’t you see what the cunt’s doin
g? Get a move on.’

  Hirsch, rolled on to his knees, peered up at Leonard, the queer blankness in the man. ‘You must be proud of your boy, Len.’

  Off guard, Leonard emitted the smallest of chuckles. It held, unmistakably, a flicker of complete contempt for his son.

  Ray stopped. Looked at the shotgun as if it were a gadget beyond his figuring, looked at his father.

  ‘You morons,’ shouted Spurling, ‘get him over here before someone sees us from the road.’

  ‘Yeah, come on Ray,’ goaded Hirsch, sitting back on his heels. ‘Do what you’re told.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Raymond sounded as if he needed time to think.

  ‘It’s easy,’ Hirsch murmured. ‘It’s only another staged suicide, and we know what a great job old Spurls did with Alison. One fuck-up after another and you’re still listening to him.’

  ‘What would you know?’

  ‘Maybe you’ll do better this time. Maybe people will actually believe I came out here and shot myself with another man’s gun.’

  But Spurling had charged back to elbow Raymond out of the way and grab Hirsch. ‘Actually, hotshot, you’re going down a mine shaft.’

  Hirsch shook him off. ‘Same as you did with Gemma, right?’

  ‘What? Oh, the fat girl.’ Spurling slapped him casually and hauled him upright.

  Hirsch thought desperately. ‘Don’t you idiots realise they have all your names? You, Venn, Logan, Coulter, McAskill..

  Ray wet his lips. ‘Who has?’

  ‘Sex crimes.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ Spurling said, and began running with Hirsch, half-dragging and half-propelling him to the far end of the shed. They were hidden from the road here, visible only to the closest bend in the creek and the rocks on the other side. Hirsch struggled feebly. Spurling slammed him against the wall, locked him there with one arm to his chest, waiting for the Latimers to catch up.

  When Ray appeared, looking tentative and panicky, Spurling stepped back. ‘All yours, Raymond.’

  Hirsch’s mouth was dry. He closed his eyes, opened them again, ready for the blast.

  But the situation had shifted. The shotgun was a hot potato, Ray Latimer shoving it at his father. ‘I can’t. Dad, you do it.’

  ‘It was your bloody wife got us into this,’ Leonard said, pushing back with the tarp.

  Hirsch moistened his mouth; croaked, ‘You got him into it, Len. No mystery where he gets his sick ideas about sex.’

  ‘Will one of you just kill him?’ screamed Spurling. ‘I did your dirty work, now you fucking do some.’

  But Ray continued to shove the shotgun at his father. Leonard stepped back, outraged. ‘The hell are you doing? Grow up, you snivelling great calf.’

  ‘You must be so proud, Supe,’ Hirsch said, ‘the calibre of your fellow paedos.’

  Spurling swatted that away and glanced at his watch, fed up with the Latimer psychodrama. ‘We haven’t got all day. One of you had better come and shoot this cunt.’

  Hirsch could feel the nausea churning. He swallowed, swallowed again and kept his voice even: ‘I suppose you’ve got Kropp running damage control. What’s he going to do, send in a report about my mental state? Plant some evidence, get rid of my car?’

  ‘Kropp?’ Spurling snorted. ‘Kropp’s got nothing to do with it. The man’s a bloody disgrace.’

  Hirsch let out a laugh of sheer disbelief.

  One exasperated eye on the Latimers, Spurling said, ‘Sometime in the next few weeks your vehicle will be found out in the dry country with an empty fuel tank. Your phone will be on the seat, flat battery. You wandered off, lost all sense of direction, no water, blazing sun, delirious, you probably fell down a mine shaft.’ He paused, smiled at Hirsch. ‘Meanwhile I’ll have leisurely access to your office files.’

  Hirsch saw how it would unfold. I’ll have been corrupt all along, or off on some paranoid course of my own, wilfully misreading evidence, trying to atone for my crooked past. He felt ill and drained, his guts hurt and he couldn’t breathe. He thought of Alison Latimer, her panic attacks and arrhythmia.

  Spurling shouted, ‘What in Christ’s name are you two arseholes doing?’

  Leonard and Raymond Latimer were enacting a strange, sad, wordless dance, the son pressing the shotgun onto his father almost as if proffering a gift, the father retreating in disgust.

  Leonard broke first. He dropped the tarp, snatched the gun and swung it neatly to his shoulder, the bore coming around on Hirsch.

  ‘Stop it!’ A little voice, crying from the rocks across the creek.

  Leonard did stop, but only briefly; the shotgun dipped, came up again.

  So it was a good thing, from Hirsch’s point of view, that Katie Street went on to clarify her demand by shooting the bastard.

  ~ * ~

  The bullet punched into Leonard’s belly and he oofed in surprise and pain. He doubled over. He took one step back, and another, tossed the shotgun weakly away and lowered himself to the ground, taking the weight with his right hand. The collapse was slow, economical, almost graceful.

  Ray Latimer reacted first, starting towards his father with a wary urgency, wanting to give comfort but expecting hostility. Too late, Spurling swung around on Hirsch with the rifle. But Hirsch had uncoiled from the starting block, leading with his shoulder, striking the superintendent full on. Spurling’s trigger finger jerked, the .303 discharging a millimetre from Hirsch’s ear. Deafened, hoping Katie was keeping her head down, he began a dance for possession of the .303 as crazy as the Latimers’.

  He spun around and around with Spurling, manoeuvring him towards the wall of the hut. He was young and he was fit; Spurling was a fifty-something desk jockey. He slammed the superintendent against the rusty metal. Spurling bounced off, limp.

  Hirsch snatched the rifle. He backed away until the three men were inside his arc of fire. Then he called, ‘Katie? You can come out now.’

  She emerged edgily, ready to run, taking stock before picking her way across the creek bed. Now she was sprinting towards Hirsch, stepping wide of Leonard Latimer as if he might still harm her. She reached Hirsch. She got as close to him as she could.

  He hugged her thin shoulders briefly. ‘Where’s the gun?’

  She pointed across the creek at the rocks. ‘Over there.’

  ‘It’s Mr Latimer’s?’

  She toed the dirt. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just as well you pinched it.’

  She was indignant. ‘No one would listen to me about that car. Lots of times I saw it. Today I saw it go in Mr Latimer’s place.’ She pointed towards the Vimy Ridge gates.

  ‘You’ve been hiding the gun all this while?’

  ‘In my tree house.’

  ‘Listen, girlie,’ Spurling said, ‘this is a very bad man. Go and tell your mother to call the police.’

  Katie looked up at Spurling, a scrappy kid with a tough little core of selfhood. ‘He is the police,’ she said, full of scorn.

  ~ * ~

  34

  TWO DAYS LATER, Hirsch debriefed with Wendy Street over a glass of wine. Wendy held her glass to the light a little crookedly. Her consonants had become slightly smudged. ‘I have to say my daughter seems quite phlegmatic about shooting a man. “Mr Latimer was going to kill Paul so I shot him.’”

  ‘Just as well she did,’ Hirsch said. ‘Just as well she’s not agonising over it.’

  They were in Wendy’s kitchen, late afternoon, Bob Dylan drifting from the speakers. The sun, seeking a way in past the blind above the sink, lit Wendy’s hair, the finer, flyaway strands so burning in the light that Hirsch wanted to reach out and tame them.

  ‘A counsellor’s been offered, as they say...I don’t know that she needs one. What do you think?’

  Hirsch glanced at Katie, who was belly down, chin up before the TV set in the adjoining sunroom. ‘She’s clearly suffering.’

  A twist of a smile. ‘Joking aside, though. What if the enormity of
it hits her one day?’

  Hirsch took a chance and reached his hand out. Her hand, a warm claw under his, turned upwards in welcome. ‘All you can do,’ he said, when his pulse had settled, ‘is listen and watch. Not make a big deal about it if she raises the issue.’

  ‘Not make a big deal about it as in, it’s okay to shoot people or as in, don’t make her anxious and guilty?’